Disputes about online games

Disputes Resolution

If one of the players disputes a game and a volunteer judge reviews it, they may decide in four possible results:

Declare a winner, if:

The game was clearly on their favor when it was abandoned.

Their opponent didn't show sportsmanship, was rude or used inappropriate language.

Their opponent cheated, didn't follow the rules correctly, or did not know how to play correctly.

Declare a double loss, if:

Both players didn't show sportsmanship, were rude or used inappropriate language.

Both players cheated, didn't follow the rules correctly, or did not know how to play correctly.

Declare the game unresolved if:

the game was abandoned too early for a decision to be made on any other result.

Declare a draw, if:

The game was advanced enough but none of the criteria above for a winner was met.

Penalties

If a disputed game gets resolved and one of the players is declared a winner, or if it's declared a double loss, the player or players who lose the game get penalized for their misbehavior. The penalty consists on -6 points towards the monthly tournament score, and any player who accumulates 10 or more penalties on a given month gets automatically banned from playing again during that whole month and the next month.

If you get penalized because of a disputed game, please take the following steps:

Please don't worry. Being penalized once in a while is no big deal. The system is designed to hurt only those players who get penalized multiple times because their behavior is not the appropriate. Occassionally, you may have left the game because of a disconnection or computer problem, and as we can not know about this, the penalty gets applied, but this doesn't really affect your tournament score or your options to keep playing. So you don't need to do anything in these cases.

If you do think the resolution of the game is unfair, and the comment provided by the judge does not explain it fully, you should first discuss the issue directly with the judge. Please be polite and understand that they are volunteers who do this work as a way to help the community and to make our tournaments possible.

If you still have an issue after discussing the question with the judge, then you may contact us so that we can study your case. But please bare in mind that the admins of this site are not expert players of all the available games, so we may only decide on clear cases of misbehavior by a player or a judge and can not take any decision based on game rules.